Vue prise de la terrasse de Bellevue, by François-Edme Ricois, 1823

This is charming little painting:  A view from the terrace at Bellevue overlooking the Seine and the western edge of Paris beyond.  Children, their nurse in attendance, are out for a ride in a pony cart which is led by a liveried groom.  The odd little potted plants rather carelessly arrayed along the path.  The sun beginning to set beyond the bluffs, one can almost smell the cooling grass and flowers, hear the soft screech of the birds overheard, preparing to roost.

The landscape we see is that which descends from the Château de Bellevue.  First built for the marquise de Pompadour in 1750, later redesigned for Louis XV by the great Ange-Jacques Gabriel, exquisitely redecorated my Mesdames, the king's daughters, after his death, it was looted during the Revolution.

This image was painted in the same year that the château was demolished.

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François-Edme Ricois (29 August 1795, Courtalain - 21 January 1881, Mareil-Marly), French landscape painter. A pupil of Jean-Victor Bertin, Girodet, and Constant Bourgeois, he exhibited at the Salon from 1819 to 1880, mostly views of castles and landscapes in France and Switzerland.